A leading provider of abortion care is expanding in Connecticut, as state lawmakers look to further strengthen reproductive health. Their work comes at a time when 10 states have measures to protect abortion rights on the ballot this November.
Across the nation, 21 states have banned or restricted abortion care since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022 — Connecticut has not. The right to an abortion in Connecticut has been codified in state law since 1990.
But since the repeal of Roe, Planned Parenthood is seeing more people coming to Connecticut from out-of-state for abortion care. The numbers further surged last year, and are holding steady, said Amanda Skinner, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southern New England.
More people in Connecticut are also seeking a variety of care, and Planned Parenthood is expanding to meet the demand, Skinner said.
“We are providing telemedicine abortion,” Skinner said. “We have expanded our gender-affirming care program. We launched providing Opill, which is an over the counter birth control pill.”
But for low-income patients in Connecticut access to abortion care can still be an issue, especially for people marginalized by both income and race.
“Even here in Connecticut, too many people continue to face barriers getting the care they need,” Skinner said. “And so telemedicine is one way to reduce barriers to care.”
A recent study from the nonprofit policy group Guttmacher Institute found roughly two-thirds of people getting abortions in states that reimburse those services — like Connecticut — use their Medicaid insurance to pay for it.
But Brittni Fredrickson, associate director of Women's Health Policy at KFF, said those reimbursements have been historically low.
“In Connecticut, there's a fee schedule for physicians who are providing surgical services, and the reimbursement for abortion services for those providers is quite low,” she said. “But Connecticut does have a separate fee schedule for family planning clinics and abortion providers. Those reimbursement rates are much higher.”
In Connecticut, physicians are reimbursed by Medicaid $128 for a first trimester surgical abortion. It's a rate well below the median U.S. average of $334 for that same procedure, according to Fredrickson.
At clinics like Planned Parenthood that specialize in birth control or abortion care, the Connecticut Medicaid reimbursement rate for a first trimester surgical abortion is higher at $541. But Skinner said that rate still only covers about half the cost of care.
Jillian Gilchrest, a state representative from West Hartford and co-chair of the Public Health Committee, said she wants this to change.
“We're looking at increasing the Medicaid rate for both family planning services and for abortion care,” she said. “Those rates have not been increased since the early 2000s and so that is causing there to be waiting lists for services.”
Gilchrest is working with State Rep. Kai Belton from Middletown on Medicaid reimbursements.
Belton, head of the state’s Black Maternal and Infant Health Caucus, is also working to expand access to other aspects of reproductive health care — like doulas.
“It really falls down to Black and brown individuals not having that access, not having the education,” Belton said. “It's important for us as a state to prioritize that and make sure that people have what they need.”
Voters in the 10 states that have measures to protect abortion rights on their ballots this November, including the swing state of Arizona, will have the option to vote to protect or expand access to abortion care in their states.
